


Beginnings Are What We Make Of Them

by raendown



Series: Rare Pair Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Clan Swap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 14:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19175695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: In which Tobirama is a Hatake, Kagami is a Hyuga, and Tobirama never believes the rumors that always turn out to be true.





	Beginnings Are What We Make Of Them

**Author's Note:**

> For the Rare Pair Bingo event - Clan Swap Prompt

As a Hatake, Tobirama had never really been able to understand the sheer intensity of whatever strange hatred existed between the Senju and Uchiha. His brother had a friend in the Uchiha clan, the hot-tempered Head Madara who Tobirama had never been especially fond of, but no matter how many times they brought up the topic Madara had never been able to explain it in a way that made sense. As far as he could understand the two clans hated each other simply because they did.

It was therefore an incredible shock to learn that they had somehow managed to broker peace and planned to build a village together, of all things. Tobirama had seen a lot of crazy things in his career as a shinobi but this news broke in to his top three list right from the start. All things considered he hadn’t expected the concept to actually become a reality no matter how nice it sounded. Right up until the day he had to pick up the bags Hashirama had packed for him – because he hadn’t seen the point in doing it himself – and actually move in to this fairy tale of a village with the rest of his clan, Tobirama believed the whole thing would fall apart up until he stepped through the massive gates Hashirama had offered to build as a gesture of good will.

With his two feline companions at his side Tobirama wandered the freshly laid streets and marveled that dreams really do come true. Not his own, of course, because his dreams usually involved Hashirama coming down with a very specific case of amnesia and forgetting how to hug for weeks at a time, but someone’s dreams at least. The village layout wasn’t exactly up to the standard he would have come up with himself and there were some fairly important pieces of the puzzle missing that made him wonder if there would be a suggestion box somewhere he could add his two cents in to but overall his first impression was that the place wasn’t all that bad. He hadn’t really expected any of this to work out and yet now that he was here he had to admit he could envision this as everyday life.

It helped a great deal that they had been promised indoor plumbing.

Rounding a corner, following his nose towards the scent of something absolutely heavenly, he was crossing through an alley when he first met Kagami. With their territories so far apart he hadn’t met very many Hyuga in his life but he supposed the man before him was probably a typical example of his clan. Black hair falling in shaggy curls around his face, large eyes a pale lavender color and lacking any sort of pupil, either young enough or just good enough not to have any visible scars, he certainly was a handsome sight to behold. It was still the blueberry tart in his hands that held most of Tobirama’s attention.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded. He saw little point in going through the necessary social politeness rituals when that would only waste precious time he could be using to find his own blueberry heaven. It wasn’t as though they were very likely to see each other again with this many people from so many different clans running around.

“Uh…bakery down the street? Down here on the eastern side.” Those massive pale eyes blinked at him, possibly wondering if he planned on attacking someone over an admittedly delicious looking tart. Tobirama nodded gratefully and left without saying anything else.

He didn’t think very much about the other man once they lost sight of each other. Sure he was especially good looking for a Hyuga – by Tobirama’s tastes anyway – but he was far from the only attractive face in the hordes of new people teeming through the bustling village and their encounter had hardly been noteworthy in any way. As soon as he’d found the little bakery and satisfied his belly with two blueberry tarts Tobirama had already all but forgotten the man who led him there in the first place.

It wasn’t until nearly a month later that Hashirama’s connection with that blasted Uchiha led to his name being thrown about for certain administrative duties and Tobirama found himself reporting to the great garish tower in the center of town to be interviewed for a position he didn’t even really want. Living here was one thing. No one had ever said anything about making him work for anyone that didn’t bear the same clan name as him. Until Hashirama had ousted him from his lab he’d been perfectly happy continuing on with the same duties he had always fulfilled for the Hatake, playing nice with their new neighbors now that they were here but otherwise keeping to himself for the most part.

After two hours of idiotic questions Tobirama lost his temper and told the man interviewing him that this whole stupid village would burn down around their ears if _he_ was the one running it because his questions left much to be desired. He thought he might get in trouble for it, was actually kind of looking forward to the excitement after such a boring start to his day, but instead after a handful of whirlwind conversations he somehow found himself being assigned a seat on the village high council, far and away the youngest member.

He even had his own office, which was sort of nice. But the most interesting part was the young man they introduced as his new assistant.

“Blueberry tarts!” the man said in place of a greeting. Tobirama eyed the floppy curls on his head and smiled.

“Well. This seems like a good time to apologize for my boorish behavior that day. I was hungry, although I realize that’s not much of an excuse. My brother tells me I get….snippy…when I haven’t eaten.”

“Hangry,” the young man nodded solemnly. Tobirama rolled his eyes.

“Yes, my brother uses the same ridiculous term. I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name?”

An enthusiastic hand thrust forward for him to shake. “Hyuga Kagami! I’m to be your assistant, or so they tell me. I’ll just apologize now for all the disasters and save us both the time. Between you and me I’m probably going to make a terrible assistant – but I promise to try hard anyway!”

“Then why, pray tell, were you assigned as one?” Tobirama asked. He noted distantly that the smile Kagami gave him while rubbing awkwardly at one ear was pretty cute.

“Probably because I get really distracted a lot and I like to set things on fire so the elders usually try to make sure I’m bogged down with duties that keep me in a place where I can be watched. I swear I don’t _mean_ for things to catch fire! I just…the flames are pretty.”

Tobirama gave the man a long hard look before finally declaring, “You should have been an Uchiha.”

“Well there’s some disparity about who my dad really is so…” Kagami gave an easy chuckle and shrugged his apparent pyromania off like nothing more than a simple bad habit. Which, to be fair, when compared to the bad habits of other shinobi Tobirama had met in his life, it kind of was.

“I think we’ll do just fine together,” Tobirama decided.

“Awesome! Yes! Oh man, I’m so glad you didn’t refuse to work with me because then they would have found someone else for me to work with and I’m pretty sure my elders were going to try and set me up with one of the Yamanaka next.” A shudder passed through his new assistant. “Just the thought of someone getting in to my head like they do freaks me out. Ugh.”

Since Tobirama sort of agreed with that he couldn’t really justify reprimanding the other man for saying it, although he did murmur a quick reminder about being careful not to say such things in other company.

Getting used to each other took some time. Tobirama wasn’t the most trusting of people, having learned the tenants of the shinobi life perhaps a little too well, but Kagami’s naturally open personality wore him down bit by bit and in just a few weeks he found himself learning to rely on the man for small things that gradually increased to semi-important things. It was nice. Tobirama was hard pressed to remember the last time he’d made any friends outside of his own clan, although a lot of that could be attributed to how put off most people were by the two massive leopards that followed him everywhere.

Unlike most people Kagami seemed delighted by them and before long he had taken to spoiling them whenever Tobirama’s back was turned, often showing up to work with raw meat sealed in his pocket to be doled out as treats under one of their desks. Also unlike most people he managed to restrain himself from asking about the nature of their bond until they had all known each other for several months already.

“Why cats?” was his typically tactless way of bringing up the subject. “All the rest of the Hatake have contracts with dogs or even the wolf packs. And from what I can tell most of them just sign the summoning contract and then call on their companions when they need those skills like everyone else who has a summons. Why do you always have to be so different?”

“First of all fuck you.” Tobirama narrowed his eyes across the room playfully. “I’m not different, I’m the upgraded model they all wish they could be. Second of all I like cats. End of story.”

“Oh come on! There has to be more to it than that!” Kagami laughed but Tobirama only shrugged.

“Nothing momentous. When I was young there was one very brave cat that refused to show fear to the dogs in our clan and she often came to sleep under my front porch. I liked her. So when it came time for me to find a summoning contract of my own I found a family of cats instead of dogs.” With a rueful twist of his mouth Tobirama eyed the couch on the far side of the office, home to two massive spotted leopards. “I may have underestimated how tightly our contract bound us together when I signed it, though. Now they won’t leave.”

One of the cats lifted her head to blink two golden eyes in his direction. “You would have us no other way,” she purred. Then she lay her head back down, presumably fast asleep a moment later.

Kagami was polite enough to snicker rather than laugh outright as Tobirama cleared his throat and stood from his desk to pretend he was looking for something important in the file cabinets in the opposite side of the room, hiding the mild embarrassment on his face. Only when he was certain the pink was gone from his cheeks and he could turn his lips down in a stern expression once more did he turn back around.

“At least you got to choose your own binding,” Kagami pointed out.

“Did you not choose you own summoning contract?” Tobirama asked. His assistant blinked and then waved the question away with a laugh.

“No, no, I meant- well, we’re both bound but at least you got to choose when and to who and, well, yours probably doesn’t come with the threat of having your brain boiled inside you own skull.” He was laughing. Kagami was _laughing_ now despite there being nothing funny about that statement.

Tobirama stared at the man in horror. “I’m sorry, what was that bit about the boiling of brains?”

“You don’t know about the seal?”

Then Kagami was lifting the fringe of his curly hair to reveal a simple design in green ink tattooed in the center of his forehead. While it certainly did explain the low chakra buzz Tobirama could feel from his assistant at all times it did not explain why it was there. He’d certainly heard a few rumors about the Hyuga clan and some kind of clan-wide slavery seal but he’d thought obviously those were just that: rumors. In no world would he believe a clan as old and venerated as the Hyuga to be capable of such horrific treatment of themselves.

Eyes riveted to the vague ‘x’ shape in the center of the sea, Tobirama stepped closer for a better look and asked with trepidation, “What is that and what does it do?” Questions he could answer himself with a bit of study but he was hardly about to shove the man’s head down on his work table for three hours of observation.

“It’s called the Caged Bird Curse Seal and it’s given to all branch family members when we reach twelve years old. Mostly as a safety precaution so that if we fall in battle our Byakugan can’t be harvested.”

“Mostly,” Tobirama repeated slowly. “What is its secondary purpose?”

“Ah, I’m not really supposed to talk about it without permission. It’s kind of a clan secret.” Kagami shifted uncomfortably, checking the windows and door like he was afraid they might have been overheard. He jumped a little when Tobirama stepped closer again.

“Do you trust me?”

Gnawing at his lip, Kagami nodded. “That’s unfair, Tobirama.”

“If it gets me answers then I don’t care. You know very well that I will not sell your secrets. Please. If you don’t tell me what the does then I’m sure my imagination will come up with a hundred things worse than reality. All I have in my head right now are rumors I can’t put any stock in.” Tobirama wrinkled his nose at the thought. He always had hated not having all the possible details about a situation he was walking in to. No one had told him that getting attached to a Hyuga would be any sort of ‘situation’.

But attached he was. Kagami was interesting and fun, understated intelligence hidden quite cleverly underneath a propensity for fire and a love of pranks. Over the months they had gotten to know each other Tobirama had spent more time trying not to think about the man at night than he had sleeping and, embarrassingly, his thoughts were usually more on the innocently romantic side. 

Of all the outcomes to be found in joining this village, falling in love had not been one he foresaw.

Now here was Kagami shuffling his feet and rubbing nervously at the back of his neck in a manner Tobirama had learned meant he was worried about the reaction his news would get. Thankfully for Tobirama’s nerves he spoke up quickly.

“Ah, well, the other point of the seal is to keep the branch members of the clan in line, I guess is the most basic way I can put it. Only the members of the head family know how to activate the seal but when they do it causes extreme pain.” Kagami reached up to brush against his forehead unconsciously with a haunted expression. “It is not…a pleasant experience. Prolonged activation of the seal can cause irreparable damage to the brain or even…or even death.”

“That is quite possibly the most horrific thing I have ever heard,” Tobirama whispered.

Yet Kagami only shrugged and mumbled, “It’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad? Not so bad!? Kagami”- Tobirama lurched forward without thought to take the man’s face between both hands and look deep in the pale eyes he had grown to love-“you just told me that at any moment one of the main branch members could _take you away from me_. Us. Obviously I meant us as- as a whole. The village.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly and dropped his hands, stepping away once he realized exactly how close he had brought them. It startled him in to freezing in place when Kagami stepped forward to keep the distance between them closed. When he felt fingers closing around his own he looked in to his companion’s earnest expression and thought dimly that his palms were probably clammy with nerves. He hoped that wasn’t too off-putting.

“Don’t freak out, okay? I meant it! It’s really not that bad!” Kagami tilted his chin to smile up at Tobirama through his eyelashes and the effect was devastating.

“How can you say that?” Tobirama asked quietly. Confusion touched him when, before answering, his companion began to gnaw on his lip again and those pale lavender eyes of his darted nearly everywhere else in the room before meeting his gaze once more.

“It doesn’t matter to me what seal I wear. This has been a part of me since I was a child and I made my peace with it a long time ago but that’s not the point. Wherever I go and whoever thinks they have me bound in any way…I always feel free when I’m with you.”

“Oh.”

Such an inadequate response yet for perhaps the first time in his life Tobirama found himself truly without words. All that existed in his mind at that moment was a powerful and contradictory cocktail of triumph and anger, both primal and furious emotions ready to boil over at any moment, each of them vying for dominance until he couldn’t decide how to react or what to do. So he stood quiet and still while Kagami stared back at him with an oddly understanding smile.

It took a shameful amount of time for the truth to settle in to past the cacophony inside his own head. Between one moment and the next Tobirama shook off the stupor and, in a sudden burst of movement, drew Kagami in to his chest to tuck the small man underneath his chin.

“There you go,” a warm voice teased from somewhere near his clavicle. “Took you long enough to get it.”

“I think I can be forgiven a few moments of shock. Neither of us have given the other any hint of romantic advances until now; there was no reason for me to imagine that you might return my interest.”

“Yeah well you should try reading your own face some time. It’s impossible! How was I supposed to know whether or not it was safe to flirt when I could barely get it out of you whether you’d ever dated before at all?” Kagami huffed with great insult, entirely offset by the way he squirmed a little closer.

Before Tobirama could say anything in response he was interrupted by a rumbling purr from much closer than expected. He looked down at their feet to find both of his feline partners up off the couch and sitting behind Kagami, butting their heads against his hip affectionately in a silent declaration that they approved of his choice. One of them met his eye and he offered her a nod in thanks but her response was only to purr a little louder so he turned his attention to pushing the curls back from Kagami’s forehead and bending down to press a kiss against the seal.

“First,” he murmured, “I am going to bring up a few of the ‘rumors’ I have heard about this issue to the council and see what your representatives have to say for themselves. And then I am going to spend whatever effort it takes to force your elders to realize how utterly inhumanely _stupid_ this practice is. I will not stand for it.”

“Would you be this grumpy about it all if you it was anyone but me wearing the seal?” Kagami asked him. Tobirama lifted one eyebrow to grant the man a flat look.

“You know me well enough to know the answer to that.”

“Right, sorry.”

“You should be.”

A heartbeat passed and then suddenly Kagami was smiling up at his brilliantly. “So are you going to kiss me now or what?”

“Oh have you absolutely no sense of romance at all?” Tobirama griped.

Still, he did kiss the man though. The urge had been buried in him since mere weeks after they met so it was no hardship to finally give in and press their lips together with a breathy sigh of satisfaction. Of course, the mood was a little undercut by the raucous purring from around their waists but he’d learned to work around that sound years ago. Hopefully Kagami could learn to do the same.

He had every intention of keeping his word to follow up on this issue, to make sure the rest of the village understood the truth of the injustices to be found in the Hyuga power imbalance, and to one day see Kagami and the others of his clan free from the wretched seal ‘keeping them in line’.

But that was for later, tasks to be tackled on another day. Right now it was getting late in the evening and they should both be leaving the office soon. With the way things were going he thought it was reasonable to hope they might leave together and continue this conversation over an intimate dinner. Curse seals aside, Tobirama had other plans for the man in his arms. He was a Hatake, after all, and he enjoyed a good hunt as much as the rest of his people.

What excellent luck that his prey seemed all too willing to be caught.


End file.
